


Les Rêveurs

by TheTeaIsAddictive



Series: The Beauty of a Beast [4]
Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: AU where she can talk to the beast in her dreams like in the original tale, F/M, how do i even tag that?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6831196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTeaIsAddictive/pseuds/TheTeaIsAddictive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a reason Belle was so shocked to see what he looked like after the transformation.</p>
<p>She'd seen him before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les Rêveurs

**Les Rêveurs**

She knew she was asleep the moment she recognised her old room. It was positively minuscule, built into the attic, and had a small mountain of books piled beneath her window. Belle slowly twirled, drinking in every inch of it: the clumsily-made patchwork quilt she'd completed after her mother died: the sloping roof she was slowly but surely outgrowing: the boxy closet that held her other three dresses (one pink, one green, one yellow, all in the same style as her blue dress): the small wooden chest containing the start of Belle's trousseau - she'd never thought she'd see any of it ever again. As she turned around again, she suddenly saw a man standing in the furthest corner from her, half-consumed in shadow. With the strange knowledge common to everyone in a dream, Belle knew that this strange person would do her no harm. 

"Hello?"

The man gave a sudden start; his face now fell into the light and Belle could see the high cheekbones, the broken nose, and a pair of intensely blue eyes, half-covered by a mane of red hair. He took a shallow breath. 

"Hello." He took a couple of steps forward, and Belle saw he was dressed in a plain white shirt and black trousers. She also saw he was barefoot, like herself, and her lips curved upwards slightly. 

"You certainly have a lot of books," the man said, glancing at Belle to see if it was okay before gently picking one up. She recognised the book immediately - it was her mothers copy of some fairy tales. The mysterious man flicked through a few pages, until he chuckled and read the title, "La Belle et La Bête."

"You've heard the story before?" she asked. 

"My mother read it to me once, when I was small," he said. "She said that her mother used to read it to her every night, until she had it memorised. And her mother before her, and her mother before her, et cetera." He looked down intensely at the paper, as if trying to get it to divulge its secrets. "She didn't have a daughter, so she read it to me. But only once."

"Did she . . . did she die?" Belle didn't know where her bravery came from - she supposed it was the whole unreality of the dream around her. "Because my mother died too, when I was seven. This was hers."

"Shall we read it?" He looked down at Belle, his blue eyes shining, and she squeezed his hand gently. 

"Yes," she smiled. "I think we shall."

He sat on the end of her bed, and Belle perched next to him, his body heat warming her slightly, and, in a light tenor voice, began to read. 

***

The next time she dreamed of the stranger in her bedroom, it was the night after the Beast had saved her from the wolves. Once again, Belle was alone in her room, looking out the window at the same dawn she'd woken up to the day Gaston had proposed, when she heard a knock at the door. She opened it to see the young man who had read to her wearing an anxious look on his face. 

"Are you alright?" he asked anxiously, looking into her face and running his hands around her body, as if he was checking she wasn't hurt. 

"Yes, Monsieur, I'm fine," Belle smiled reassuringly, pushing his hands away from her, "why wouldn't I be?"

He looked confused for a minute, absent-mindedly rubbing the pads of his thumb against her knuckles, before shaking his head clear of whatever had been bothering him. "I thought - I thought you were in danger - in the woods -"

"That was hours ago, I'm perfectly safe now," Belle interjected. She saw the redhead visibly relax, and he quickly squeezed her fingers before dropping his hands to his sides again. 

"Can you remember how far we got with the fairy tale last time?" Belle asked after a short silence. "I think I may have woken up halfway through."

"I'm pretty sure we finished it," the man replied. "Do you have anything else like it?"

"Let me see..." Belle murmured, sifting expertly through her piles of books before picking up a green and gold bound volume. "Aha!" she exclaimed. 

"What is it?" 

"I was given this a couple of days ago - it's one of my favourite books. Do you mind if I read it?" She looked shyly up at him, brown eyes peeking beneath dark lashes. 

"I don't mind at all," the stranger smiled. "What makes it so good?"

"Oh, I don't know, really - far off places, magic spells, daring sword fights, a prince in disguise - what more reason do you need?"

The man chuckled at her enthusiasm, and leaned against the bed in the same position he had taken last time. Belle stood up again and settled herself next to him, the small of her back fitting perfectly into the crook of his arm. 

"Chapter One..."

***

After that, Belle met up with the mysterious man about once a week in her dreams for the next three months. Sometimes they talked; more often they read together. She never asked about his past, and he never asked about hers. But strange things would happen. If she started reading something with the Beast, the man would know all about it in their dreams. And a week or so before that ball with the Beast, Belle and the stranger practised the very dance that was performed mere hours later. Later that night, after she'd seen to her father, before Gaston came knocking on the door to ruin _everything_ , Belle walked up to her room. 

It was . . . empty. Not of her things. Everything was there - the patchwork quilt, the little closet and wooden chest, even the pile of books beneath the window. But still, something seemed . . . missing. She thought of the Beast, then she thought of the man. Belle put two and two together. 

Suddenly she heard someone knocking at the front door. She raced down the steps, and opened the door without even looking through the machine. 

"Gaston!"

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so this is based off of the original tale, where she talks to the Beast in her dreams. 
> 
> Originally posted to ff.net 26/07/2013


End file.
